Chinese or foreign language operating system?

I understand Palm is able to display menu in Chinese and English (like most Symbian phones). However, this does not seem to be possible with Windows Mobile phones; you have to choose either Chinese or another language. I travel between Europe and China, so it is very practical to have both, depending on my location.

I have tried CE-Star for Chinese input with non Chinese OS, and it was acceptable (in my case it was Norwegian), but not too stable (Windows Mobile 5).

I am reluctant to buy a Palm, since this operating system seems to be phased out gradually.

What should I go for?

Erik

You can't have the OS itself in both Chinese and English, but supporting Chinese throughout the OS is simple with Windows Mobile. It's just that the operators don't see fit to enable the correct unicode fonts or IME's in the World Wide English versions of the ROMs.

Here are instructions I posted in an earlier thread:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1003&start=47

I've also discovered some other input options if you're looking for some alternate input methods to ZTA4 (which is still the best Pinyin input I've found), check out this site:
http://www.studiokuma.com/wm/?section=support

I haven't tested those out yet, but if I'm reading it correctly those are the IME's that ship with the chinese version of windows mobile. I'm hoping one of them is the handwriting recognizer, that's the one hole I've been trying to fill with the freeware/hacked options.

Somewhat annoyingly, WM, like desktop Windows, won't let you switch User Interface languages on the fly. Just isn't possible as far as I'm aware. Linux does a good job of it, though. The way it works on Palm is a bit of a hack though. Not sure exactly how it works.

As for displaying Chinese and English simultaneously, WM, Palm, etc. should all be able to do that. Though Palm will *only* allow Chinese and English. If you try and enter non-*English* characters (like accented vowels), then things will go badly (due to Palm not using Unicode, and CJKOS using GB2312/GBK/Big5).

Very useful information. I have also considered the Casio EW V2800H electronic dictionary instead of a mobile phone with a dictionary, but then I would have to carry that around, in addition to the mobile phone. in any event, this is entirely another matter. I will probably go for a windows mobile device, although I got rid of one about one year ago; it was a WM 5 Imate K-jam, and I did not think much of it as a phone.

I have also heard that you can run WM programmes on Symbian through some type of emulation.....

Thanks, anyway.

I use a wm 6.1 device (its a TyTNII variant) and it supports Chinese through CEStar... I also have d-ear input installed and it seems to work fine, I cant change my operating language (ie English to Chinese) without changing the ROM but it shows chinese and english in the menu, I can use chinese in all areas of the phone/pda and it runs Pleco like a dream...